This is why I caution people not to appeal to men's decency when discussing misogyny by asking, what if that was your sister? Not just because it seems to require a personal attachment to care about the abuse and suffering of another, but it ignores this moral dichotomy. The first thought in the mind of many men is, "But my sister wouldnt be in that situation." Logic goes like this: My sister is a good woman. What this other women or girl has done makes her a bad woman and therefore not deserving of care." We see it in DV situations, in sexual assault cases, in the discussion of the Epstein files. Listening to right wing spin take the position of laying blame at the feet of the minors made me enraged, "It's not like they were 8." and "She was old enough to no what she was doing." Notice how that argument only comes up when we want to shame a child who was a victim and not when discussing whether they can consent to abortion or should be forced into pregnancy.
One of the things that strikes me reading this is that patriarchy seems to create a profound fear of reciprocity in some men.
Reciprocity requires another human being with equal needs, equal desires, equal agency and equal worth. Yet much of what many boys are taught about masculinity places them at the centre of the story.
The resulting shock when women turn out to be fully human rather than supporting characters can be extraordinary, damaging and in some cases dangerous.
Absolutely. The manosphere, like patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy, is not about reciprocity or mutuality, but rather about exploitation and extraction. Like the earth, like the women, or anyone else considered "less than."
Frankly, that is a lot of what the 'pro-life' sic movement is about, when you see how many people who use that term about themselves are against medicaid for children etc etc, you realize that not all, but many of them are really just wanting to make sure that if women have sex the consequences are always waiting for them
As did my Grandmas! My mom got Valium, but she was bitter about not being able to get “the good stuff.” She remembered it from when her father would drug the kids when he was too busy with schemes and scams to watch them (he said). So of course when I cried from ear infections she would convince my pediatrician to prescribe me big bottles of phenobarbital syrup.
Then there were antihistamines and codeine, hot toddies to wash it down. All totally normalized. And they wonder why I put needles up my arm before I could legally buy beer 🤦♀️
We’re still doing it — SSRIs blunt all experience and emotion, they don’t make you happy — when working as intended, they make you less discontent despite unchanging circumstances.
Depression, anxiety — these are a healthy organism’s natural response to the lives most of us are living. We’re not broken, the system is.
Given how many men I now see who want a prescription to make them less miserable, this is one area where capitalism has given men and women something like common ground.
I was 9 years old the first time I thought about dying by suicide. I didn’t even know that word. I just wanted to die. As a fourth grader, I made a plan and prepared to die. I didn’t follow through because I was terrified of suriviving and getting in trouble. Think about that. I was more scared of surviving, than dying.
I wanted to die every day for 16 years. I put myself into risky situations hoping I’d die in an accident or get murdered.
I wasn’t physically or sexually abused. I had rich parents, and lived in a country club.
I wanted to die because there is a chemical imbalance in my brain.
I was finally able to get help at 25, and have lived 18 glorious years without wanting to die by suicide.
Yes, Yermahm*, I think you nailed it. Was just talking last night to a friend who is a college student about dopamine and social media. She’s off Social Media completely. Kind of the same thing in a parallel world.
As a parent of a daughter with asthma, I became very good friends with Benadryl. When you cant afford the inhalers, you do what you think is best. BTW…I sometimes use 2 or 3 Mg of liquid benedryl to sleep.
Dammit, it always cuts me off and forbids fixing it.
Yes, I know it’s true for many women, but I was a little hippie, left home at 17, having skipped high school and gotten my GED before leaving New Jersey for a tiny town 8,000 feet up in the Colorado Rockies.
Hippy men prided themselves in their respect for women and their orgasms. My orgasms were a long time coming, but those hippy men never gave up hope, never stopped trying.
My mother’s second husband was a so called “hippy”. He was seven years her junior. He was more misogynistic than my bio dad who was 9 years older than the step dad.
S-dad demanded a stay at home wife. Bestowed upon her a household allowance. Which varied every month. Made her stop going to university. She had been pursuing a degree in communications during their 4 year courtship. Made her turn down a job offer from the program director at KQED channel 9 San Francisco. Convinced my mom that she would never get anyone to love her because she was too old with two many children. One of us being his daughter. Molested me at age 12. Grooming started at age 4. Divorced my mom almost to the day he turned 27, the age young men were no longer draftable. The marriage was apparently a draft dodge.
I still embrace the 60’s hippie values. My mother’s beliefs and values are stronger in me than one sick piece of shit can destroy.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, labels and age can’t be used for divining rods.
When I read this all I could think of was the movie "The Road to Wellville". It is supposed to be about the Kellog dynasty and I suppose it is, minimally. It is really about repressed sexual desire in both men and women. Almost died when the main female character went to a doctor for a womb massage and at long last experienced an organ. Hilarious movie if you like that kind of thing.
Exactly. The lie was never that women had no desire. The lie was that female desire made a woman less safe, less respectable, less wifeable, less real. Different century, different vocabulary, same panic. Men keep acting like they’re discovering something shocking when a woman wants sex like a person instead of dispensing it like a service.
I love that term, "Boston marriage," I have one in my second novel, and was disappointed to find that the period in history I'm writing about was prior to the term. Then I realized that it was better to just show the loving relationship, and the ways they skirt male opinion or use it against them was better without the term anyway. I do love the term, though. I'm from Boston, so I take a kind of pride in it.
"Ladies, you heard it hear, if a man doesn’t think your orgasm is a good investment…take your toys and go home.³ He’s not worth it."
I gave this advice to the teen girls I mentored. I always made sure to explain that it is okay not have sex too. That is a decision of individual readiness and I would add if you can't comnfortably talk abouty sex you arent ready to have it. But If you do have sex the expecatation should be reciprocity. I had some former students tell me that was sound advice. .
Going out on a non-Western limb here, but seers (people who “see” or apperceive energy (shamans, some Tibetan Buddhists, native practitioners of all kinds and cultures) have seen that an orgasm is a bestowal of energy upon the potential fetus/eventual person. It takes two orgasms—male and female—to equip the possible zygote with full energy. Those who only get half tend to be less energetic as people. And I wonder, if and when biological sciences reach the level of physics, if we won’t find this is true. That would mean a woman’s orgasm is critical for the future life of her child. Just wondering.
Ooof, let’s hope the Western patriarchy doesn’t pick this one up and weaponize it against us like they do everything else, then we’ll be laboring under an additional level of shame and anxiety, if we’re not adequate enough as women to orgasm during sex our children will suffer for it.
Now it’s not okay to just enjoy it without orgasming, if you don’t put the energy and effort into ensuring your orgasm during penetrative sex (which is the kind of sex required for conception, usually), you are knowingly and willingly depriving your child of half their soul (or energy, etc.)!!!
It will not be considered a male problem, “it”’— whatever it is — never is, it’s always our fault and our problem to solve.
You’ll forgive me if I want to keep this super low-key. Unlike knowledge of the possibility of lesbian sex, letting the patriarchy in on this theory seems dangerous.
Doesn't it all really boil down to the typical man's inability to locate a woman's "G spot" and bring a woman to earth-shattering orgasm? Maybe it's easier to feel better about yourself when you pretend that it's all the fault of the woman.
Strange. Maybe I live in a different male world, outside the “manosphere,” but in my experience women have always, inevitably, been the enthusiastic initiators of intercourse and it is when I am interacting with women as people, not sexual objects, that they will initiate. Maybe many men have the belief that sex is something they do to women rather than intercourse being a mutual pleasuring they do with women?
A fantastic read, thank you! The systems of oppression never, ever change and I appreciate every time someone reminds us of that.
Good old Madonna-Whore complex
This is why I caution people not to appeal to men's decency when discussing misogyny by asking, what if that was your sister? Not just because it seems to require a personal attachment to care about the abuse and suffering of another, but it ignores this moral dichotomy. The first thought in the mind of many men is, "But my sister wouldnt be in that situation." Logic goes like this: My sister is a good woman. What this other women or girl has done makes her a bad woman and therefore not deserving of care." We see it in DV situations, in sexual assault cases, in the discussion of the Epstein files. Listening to right wing spin take the position of laying blame at the feet of the minors made me enraged, "It's not like they were 8." and "She was old enough to no what she was doing." Notice how that argument only comes up when we want to shame a child who was a victim and not when discussing whether they can consent to abortion or should be forced into pregnancy.
“ If pregnancy is god’s will then so is you’re limp dick”, gotta love Bette Midler on viagra..
One of the things that strikes me reading this is that patriarchy seems to create a profound fear of reciprocity in some men.
Reciprocity requires another human being with equal needs, equal desires, equal agency and equal worth. Yet much of what many boys are taught about masculinity places them at the centre of the story.
The resulting shock when women turn out to be fully human rather than supporting characters can be extraordinary, damaging and in some cases dangerous.
Absolutely. The manosphere, like patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy, is not about reciprocity or mutuality, but rather about exploitation and extraction. Like the earth, like the women, or anyone else considered "less than."
This is an embarrassing take
Frankly, that is a lot of what the 'pro-life' sic movement is about, when you see how many people who use that term about themselves are against medicaid for children etc etc, you realize that not all, but many of them are really just wanting to make sure that if women have sex the consequences are always waiting for them
My mother took Miltowns. It was fashionable, then. Seeing the ad brought all that back.
As did my Grandmas! My mom got Valium, but she was bitter about not being able to get “the good stuff.” She remembered it from when her father would drug the kids when he was too busy with schemes and scams to watch them (he said). So of course when I cried from ear infections she would convince my pediatrician to prescribe me big bottles of phenobarbital syrup.
Then there were antihistamines and codeine, hot toddies to wash it down. All totally normalized. And they wonder why I put needles up my arm before I could legally buy beer 🤦♀️
We’re still doing it — SSRIs blunt all experience and emotion, they don’t make you happy — when working as intended, they make you less discontent despite unchanging circumstances.
Depression, anxiety — these are a healthy organism’s natural response to the lives most of us are living. We’re not broken, the system is.
Given how many men I now see who want a prescription to make them less miserable, this is one area where capitalism has given men and women something like common ground.
My response to this is that chronic depression and anxiety are not the system working normally and you can pry my Zoloft from my cold dead hands.
In no way is proper SSRI usage the same as tranquilizers in the 1950s.
OTOH, I would, indeed, swap my current pills for some phenobarbitol
I was 9 years old the first time I thought about dying by suicide. I didn’t even know that word. I just wanted to die. As a fourth grader, I made a plan and prepared to die. I didn’t follow through because I was terrified of suriviving and getting in trouble. Think about that. I was more scared of surviving, than dying.
I wanted to die every day for 16 years. I put myself into risky situations hoping I’d die in an accident or get murdered.
I wasn’t physically or sexually abused. I had rich parents, and lived in a country club.
I wanted to die because there is a chemical imbalance in my brain.
I was finally able to get help at 25, and have lived 18 glorious years without wanting to die by suicide.
Yes, Yermahm*, I think you nailed it. Was just talking last night to a friend who is a college student about dopamine and social media. She’s off Social Media completely. Kind of the same thing in a parallel world.
Thanks for your comment.
Sally
As a parent of a daughter with asthma, I became very good friends with Benadryl. When you cant afford the inhalers, you do what you think is best. BTW…I sometimes use 2 or 3 Mg of liquid benedryl to sleep.
Dammit, it always cuts me off and forbids fixing it.
Yes, I know it’s true for many women, but I was a little hippie, left home at 17, having skipped high school and gotten my GED before leaving New Jersey for a tiny town 8,000 feet up in the Colorado Rockies.
Hippy men prided themselves in their respect for women and their orgasms. My orgasms were a long time coming, but those hippy men never gave up hope, never stopped trying.
(For reference, I am 65 years old)
My mother’s second husband was a so called “hippy”. He was seven years her junior. He was more misogynistic than my bio dad who was 9 years older than the step dad.
S-dad demanded a stay at home wife. Bestowed upon her a household allowance. Which varied every month. Made her stop going to university. She had been pursuing a degree in communications during their 4 year courtship. Made her turn down a job offer from the program director at KQED channel 9 San Francisco. Convinced my mom that she would never get anyone to love her because she was too old with two many children. One of us being his daughter. Molested me at age 12. Grooming started at age 4. Divorced my mom almost to the day he turned 27, the age young men were no longer draftable. The marriage was apparently a draft dodge.
I still embrace the 60’s hippie values. My mother’s beliefs and values are stronger in me than one sick piece of shit can destroy.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, labels and age can’t be used for divining rods.
Because of my mother and her survival
I just don’t think it’s necessary to alter our views just because certain motherfuckers are liars. And that particular motherfucker was no hippy.
When I read this all I could think of was the movie "The Road to Wellville". It is supposed to be about the Kellog dynasty and I suppose it is, minimally. It is really about repressed sexual desire in both men and women. Almost died when the main female character went to a doctor for a womb massage and at long last experienced an organ. Hilarious movie if you like that kind of thing.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1435513/ see also Hysteria with Maggie Gyllenhaal.
Exactly. The lie was never that women had no desire. The lie was that female desire made a woman less safe, less respectable, less wifeable, less real. Different century, different vocabulary, same panic. Men keep acting like they’re discovering something shocking when a woman wants sex like a person instead of dispensing it like a service.
I love that term, "Boston marriage," I have one in my second novel, and was disappointed to find that the period in history I'm writing about was prior to the term. Then I realized that it was better to just show the loving relationship, and the ways they skirt male opinion or use it against them was better without the term anyway. I do love the term, though. I'm from Boston, so I take a kind of pride in it.
"Ladies, you heard it hear, if a man doesn’t think your orgasm is a good investment…take your toys and go home.³ He’s not worth it."
I gave this advice to the teen girls I mentored. I always made sure to explain that it is okay not have sex too. That is a decision of individual readiness and I would add if you can't comnfortably talk abouty sex you arent ready to have it. But If you do have sex the expecatation should be reciprocity. I had some former students tell me that was sound advice. .
Going out on a non-Western limb here, but seers (people who “see” or apperceive energy (shamans, some Tibetan Buddhists, native practitioners of all kinds and cultures) have seen that an orgasm is a bestowal of energy upon the potential fetus/eventual person. It takes two orgasms—male and female—to equip the possible zygote with full energy. Those who only get half tend to be less energetic as people. And I wonder, if and when biological sciences reach the level of physics, if we won’t find this is true. That would mean a woman’s orgasm is critical for the future life of her child. Just wondering.
Ooof, let’s hope the Western patriarchy doesn’t pick this one up and weaponize it against us like they do everything else, then we’ll be laboring under an additional level of shame and anxiety, if we’re not adequate enough as women to orgasm during sex our children will suffer for it.
Now it’s not okay to just enjoy it without orgasming, if you don’t put the energy and effort into ensuring your orgasm during penetrative sex (which is the kind of sex required for conception, usually), you are knowingly and willingly depriving your child of half their soul (or energy, etc.)!!!
It will not be considered a male problem, “it”’— whatever it is — never is, it’s always our fault and our problem to solve.
You’ll forgive me if I want to keep this super low-key. Unlike knowledge of the possibility of lesbian sex, letting the patriarchy in on this theory seems dangerous.
Doesn't it all really boil down to the typical man's inability to locate a woman's "G spot" and bring a woman to earth-shattering orgasm? Maybe it's easier to feel better about yourself when you pretend that it's all the fault of the woman.
They are able. They just can't fathom that pleasure doesn't revolve around their dick and do not care to "find it".
In a general sense, this attitude exists to this very day
Thanks for the exposure to this, it's important to know the history. It gives me context to the time we are in.
Strange. Maybe I live in a different male world, outside the “manosphere,” but in my experience women have always, inevitably, been the enthusiastic initiators of intercourse and it is when I am interacting with women as people, not sexual objects, that they will initiate. Maybe many men have the belief that sex is something they do to women rather than intercourse being a mutual pleasuring they do with women?